I started homeschooling my daughter on April 2007. She was 2 years and 3 months old.Homeschooling is not a very well known thing in Malaysia, the country that I live in. Lots of friends asked me what and how I do it.
I choose to share my journey here. Not because Im an expert in any of this. Instead I hope all the ups and downs in my journey will help you in yours.
If you are like me, a control freak, having kid will be a big shock. ^^
Before I have Den, Im pretty much in control of every expects of my life (or at least I think I did). Then Den came along, nothing is under my control. I learned what is like totally depend on our Almighty Father.
Recently, after a lengthy conversation with a friend who think she might be having post natal depression, I wrote a letter to her. I hope my experience will be able to help her in her journey. The letter is written in Chinese:
我非常的赞同你所说的生了孩子过后才发现有许多的事情都不在自己的掌控中。或者应该说其实生命原本就不在我们的掌控里，只是很多时候我们并没有发现而被生活的假象欺骗了，尤其当一切都在根据着我们的凑算在进行时，我们会以为自己在引导着自己的生命。而孩子（或病痛或死亡）把这假象撕破了。当我们发现无法掌控自己/孩子的命运时，我们会非常的害怕，担心 but all these are good for our soul. It forced us to face the true reality – to face our limitation.
Quite a few of you have asked me to post all the apps that I use in my iPad here, so here you go. Please take note that this is as of 30 Oct 2011, I upload/delete my apps on daily basis. I don't have the time to go into detail, so check them out your self. Many of them are paid apps but have free version, so make sure you download the free versions and try them out first before you purchase.
A) Utility: 1. AppAdvice - very useful for the updates on iPad and its apps. It has pc version FOC here.
2. Pocket Expenses - I use this to keep track all my expenses.
1. YouVersion - Great free app but need to pay for offline NIV (however NIV offline is free from today for 48 hours!). In order to write note, you need to be online.
2. NIV Bible By Tecarta- I opt to purchase this apps because it allow me to keep my note offline. It also come with study note.
1. Homeschool Magazine - hmmm...it seems like it is not available for MLY account. If you have oversea account, then try it out. It come with 3 free issues.
2. Common Core Standard - FOC. Listed out the common core standard for each grade.
hmm...this is taking too long....ok, I change my mind and not going to list out all the Chinese books we use, instead, this is what you can do - Go to your iTune, then select iTunes Store (on the Left panel), after that on the Right hand upper conner, key in the company listed below one by one and it should give you lots and lots of Chinese books, some free and some pay. Check them out your self:
1. RYE
2. Childhood Fine Art
3. QLL
Please take note, many of this apps are bilingual(some even have 4 languages), so you can select Chinese or English (after you downloaded)
Please take note that a lot of the free apps come with In Apps Purchase, so make sure you don't give out your account password to your kids or else.....^^
My DH and I went to Cambodia for 5 days and left Den with my parents. I prepared a present for her for each day we are gone (2 Thea Stilton, 1 Winx, 1 Sparkle World and 1 assorted board games). I also gave her study works to do each day:
1. Piano Practice 2. iPad - Note Goal Pro and Math Board 3. TimeTable worksheets 4. Chinese 500 (5 chapters per day and practice writing a new word a day) 5. 1 poem page a day 6. 2 Brain Olympiad puzzles a day.
After she finished her work each day, she can open her present and watch GoodTV. She did managed finished all the assigned works and I really like her poems.
Below are some of her poems (Words given in the worksheet are in BOLD):
The Storm I feel the wind blowing I see raindrop here and there I hear the storm going like this - BOOM! BOOM! Time to go home! Yes! Go home! RUN! RUN! It's raining! Oh! Help!
Hard and Easy Its hard to do cooking (now) but it's easy to do homework (now)
Its hard to take care of baby (now) but it's easy to read (now)
Some things are easy, some are hard, some are in between. Some things are hard 'cause I'm 6+ years old. They'll be easy when I'm seventeen.
Picnic In The Park I see tress and grass I shoo away bees and ants I munch on butter on bread I eat lots of cake and cream We play swing and sand We play ball and skip Darn-it's time to leave the park, because it's really getting dark!
Getting to know some homeschooling families and even though I know I should not compared, I cant help but to started to question the way we had been homeschooling. Are we going to the right direction? Am I spoon feeding Den too much information and not enough practical? Have I been lazy and rely too much on the curriculum and not making enough effort to make the lesson interesting for Den?
We continued to school as usual but all these questions were at the back of mind and lets just said because of that I was rather restless and short temper.
People always ask if it is difficult to homeschool. To me the difficult part is not the teaching it self. May be because I used to teach more than 100 kids in one session, so now teaching 1 is a lot easier. May be also because God has blessed me with a rather compliant child.
To me the difficult part of homeschooling is the mental struggle and self doubt. Since I grew up in conventional school system, how do I jump out of the box and school Den differently? How do I (or should I) measure Den's growth? Am I doing enough? Am I doing too much? From time to time, I will lose sight and forget Den's future is in God's hand and not in mine and thus worry my self sick.
Of cause it won't help when the whole world is questioning you as well - how about socialization? How about Secondary school? College? etc etc. Yesterday, my dad just found out my intention to continue to homeschool Den instead of sending her to P1 next year. Saying that he is not pleased is an understatement. I did not argue with him since I firmly believe it is my right to decide on Den's education. But it is going to be another war to fight soon when he realize I have no intention in following what he said.
God reminded me two weeks in the row with
Nehemiah 8:10 "Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."
So for the past few days, I have been focusing in praising God. I choose a few songs in my mind and whenever I feel restless or depressed, I focus in praising God instead.
Another difficulty I have with homeschooling is Den is with me 24/7 and some time I fell like I don't even have the space to hear my self think. Especially now when my hubby is not with me and my mom is also away, there is no one to even take Den out of my hand for short awhile. This is one of the reason I sign her up for group art lesson (instead of individual lesson at home). I need a breather.
Since we don't (and can't) do school everyday, I have been trying to squeeze as much study into the days we do school as possible. Because of wanting to squeeze everything in, I get very short temper with her especially when she dilly dally. Sometime I forget, she really doesn't need so much formal school. She need time to do her own thing, to explore on her own. That is one of the reason I homeschool her at the first place.
So for the past few days, instead giving her lots independent works (homework/worksheets) to do when I'm busy (cooking/cleaning/resting...), I let her do her own thing. She happily reread many books from our library, playing piano, drawing, etc.
It has been rough and lots of up and down and shouting, but I also managed to do a lot of thinking. There are still more to consider and may be some changes in our way of studying.
This is the summary of what we have done for the past one week:
1. Bible - we continue Proverb Project in ipad (at Chp 12 now), praise and worship (sometime I led and sometime Den led) and a new verse:
Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hungry, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. ~ Roman 12:19-21
Den is getting very good in memorizing verses. This one only took her 2 sitting. I was a bit unsure if I want her to memorize the KJV or NKJV version (without all the old English words like saith, thou, shalt, etc). Learning KJV will help her in understanding classic like Shakespeare later on. So finally I decided to let her use all the thine, saith, shalt but change the last verse to NKJV (because KJV doesn't sound right on the last verse!)
She also did the copywork for this verse. It is a long verse, so I broke it into two parts and let her copy in her journal and she also drew a picture at the side to illustrate the verse.
2. Science - We almost done with the 66 scientists video(9 more to go!) and we've totally fallen in love with science again. Now Den says she want to be a scientist, just cant decide which field to go into! LOL! I learned a lot of new thing my self like Nano technology (ok, I have to confess I have never heard of this word before this!), lung cilia, etc. 9 more to go, who know what other new things I'm going to learn with Den.
We finished Sonlight Science Week 22 (mainly about what the scientist do) and started a bit on Week 23. Haven't done Week 22 experiment yet because keep forgetting to buy the red cabbage! Does anyone know you can actually use the juice from red cabbage to test and see which things are acidic?!!
Den also did an observation on ant for her homework. This is what she wrote in her science notebook:
We also had an impromptu discussion about Earth, Sun, Moon, seasons, day & night and New Moon, Full Moon, etc today (We discussed this once when Den was around 4+, but she had forgotten all about it. No idea why the sudden interest, but I'm very happy to explain it all again. )
3. History - We started Sonlight Week 23 today and read about different type of houses for the past hundred years or so (we already did those before this past 100 years).
I also found this wonderful wonderful book in MPH sales corner called Fatimah's Kampung (I felt like I've strike gold! ^^). It is so wonderfully illustrated! It bring the readers back to the time of the old in Kampung and it also talks about how the kampung has gave way to the modern development and thus a lifestyle had been demolished.
I was standing in MPH totally in awe of the book, but at the same time cant decide if I should spend RM45 (after 30% discount!) for a book. (Don't ask me why I would be hesitated to pay RM45 for gold. Our budget for books has gone so far out this month....and BBW sales is coming this Friday!!! STL, pleas pretend you didn't see this...hehehe...you are not here to stop me!!! ) Den saw me struggling and told me she would give me all her pocket money so that I can buy the book. Now what more reasoning do I need? ^^
We just started reading it. I am going to count it as history and social science study.
4. Chinese - As I mentioned before this year is our "Improve Chinese Year". So far I think we are progressing well. Den is close to learning to read about 100 Chinese words now and her listening has improved a lot too. When my Sister In Law is back, she will have someone to practice conversation with (my SIL only speak Mandarin!). My urgent need is to get more level appropriated good reader for her to practice reading. I have a few from Odonate Publishing but it is not enough. Ok, I need to go through all those Chinese picture books again and hopefully can find something appropriate for her to read.
We have finished reading the comic book about Thomas Edison and now into Helen Keller. Den loves the series. She will even read through the pictures even though she cant read most of the words yet (I was like "YES!!"). To know more about the comic series, read here.
5. Math - After playing the games from Peggy Kaye's Games For Learning (read here), Den is getting better in place value! So we continued on our Challenging Math workbook. Today she did the multiplication below 40.
6. English - We are listening/reading Dr. Doolittle now.
We also did all the read aloud in Sonlight week 23. Today I let her start using Scholastic Instant Poetry Frame. It is much easier than writing journal, so she jump right into it. ^^
CLP is getting harder and harder, so I didn't let her do the worksheet as often as last time.
7. PE - She swam 3 times this past one week and also the usual Ballet practice.
Today Den asked if we can have a book reading day- whole day reading books (she read hers and I read mine) and no study. Since we have not had that for awhile, I said yes.
There was another reason for me to say yes...the last time we went to the SG library we had a BIG argument and ended up with Den tearing up. We argued about two things-
1. How many book she get to borrow- normally we can borrow up to 8 books. To be fair, we have 4 books each (we share an account). For the past few months I had not been borrowing much, instead I let her have my share. That day was a double your limit day, so we could actually borrow up to 16 books. So I told her I would like to get 4 or 5 books. She got upset and insisted that I should not borrow that many books.
That make me mad and felt that she was being selfish. I scolded her there and she started to cry.
2. What books to borrow- Den has been obsessed with Rainbow Magic Fairy and Magic Tree House recently. Im alright with both of the series however I disliked the way that she rejected everything else. Whenever I bring a book for her to read, if it is not from either of the series, she will says she is not interested. I felt she was not giving other books a fair chance.
On that day, after our urguement, we went to the Jr. Reading Department and can only find 1 magic tree house and none of the Rainbow Magic. I, still angry with her, told her that I'm so glad she didn't get to borrow any of her favourt books (I know, it was not my best moment), that off cause started the tears again. Finally she was so upset that she decided she would only borrow the one Magic Tree House book and didn't want anything else. So I ended up choosing another 13 books for her. Books that I think she would enjoy if she give them a chance.
We left SG before she had the chance to read any of the books. Today would be the perfect opportunity to test it out...since I knew she will read anything when she has nothing else to read!
She finished 10 out of the 14 books in 4 hours. She loves every one of them.
These are the 10 books:
If you are interested in the two series that Den is totally hooked on, here is the link:
I started writing this last Friday! 09 Sept 2011. Was not able to finish until today.
Den spent the nite with my parents last night. She came home in her pj at 1030am. After lots of hug hug (well...we haven't seen each other for the whole night, what do u expect?) and breakfast, we started our study at about 1130am.
We stared with Bible Study using Proverb Project (Read more about this cool iPad apps here). We read Chapter 6 and 7 and it talked about adultery and prostitute. I explained about the first one (unfaithful to your husband or wife) and since she did not ask about the 2nd one, I just continued reading!! ^^
After prayer (Den said, "Lord help us not to be like the bad women in Proverbs." ), we played another game from Peggy Kaye's Games For Learning. I really enjoy her book. I especially appreciate her writing down why and how she use each game with her students. Today we played 2 games from her book. One for math and one for Language (she meant it for English but I used it for Chinese). If you want to read about another math game we used from her book previously, click here. Or check out the content and others comments at Amazon site below:
For math, I wanted to help Den to have better understanding on place value, so we played The Rearrange Connection. This game required a bit more preparation than usual. I've to make :
a. A game board
b. 36 number cards
Then we were set to play. We take turn to turn over a number cards and put a marker (hers were blue marbles and I used markers from scrabble) on the corresponding game board. At first she still had to take some time to think about which number on the game board corresponding with the number card she turned over but at the end of the second game, she can go as fast as me. To win, you just need to have four of your markers next to each other - horizontally, vertically, diagonally or basically any positions as long as they can be connected:
For Chinese, we played "Road block". I took 15 words that she learned before but not very familiar and wrote them down like these:
Her challenge was to travel down the road. To make it, she had to read out each words. When she reached a words she cant read, ROADBLOCK. I would then read out the word for her and she would repeat it after me and she had to start the trip from the beginning again. She had 3 chances to reach the end of the road. If she make it, she win or else I win. Unfortunately I won. ^^ (we had not been looking at all these words for the past 2 months!). We will do this again and again until she can always make the trip, then we will change the words.
As you can see, it took some time to do prepare the game especially the math game. So while I was preparing them, Den wrote her English journal. She started this recently. She also draws for every journal entry.
Since I took out the Scrabble set (so that I can use them as marker in our math game), I decided to play Scrabble with Den. Half way through, I realized I actually didn't know how to play....I did try to google it there and then...but still had lots of question! hahah! STL! I need your help.
After all the games, Den did her Yamaha homework and practiced piano while I cooked.
After lunch, we continued watching a few videos from PBS about Scientists (66 current scientists,all of them in different fields of study/research! The link has short video for each of them to introduce their work and how they started and why they love science, link here). 66 of them...we still have a long way to go...we try to watch like 6 per day.
After that Den practice Chinese reading using Chinese Basic 500 (I wrote about this in my previous posting here). We are still at Level 1 book 5....had stop since we went to holiday in NZ in June! Time to pick it up again.(Have to remind my self daily...this is Improve Chinese Year...this is Improve Chinese year....)
Den watched GoodTV Chinese cartoon in the afternoon.
The more I read about the stories of the famous people, the more I doubt the wisdom of a so call "balance lifestyle". I mean we had been taught, well, I had been taught, it is important to have enough sleep (sleep early, wake up early), eat right, balance your work and church and family, oh and don't forget to exercise! but when you look at the stories of all those great men and women, how many of them lived a so called "balance lifestyle"?
Thomas Edison slept four hours a day...and not even consecutively! He took 1 hour rest when he was too tired and he only allowed him self to take 4 rest per day! Helen Keller studied day and night until she fainted because of exhaustion. This is the quote about Mother Teresa "Mother Teresa of Kolkata (Calcutta) led a life beyond balance. She had no secular career, no family, no apparent hobbies. She had an all consuming ministry to those completely abandoned by society. Founding and leading a religious order and expanding the work of the Missionaries of Charity, left little time for sleep, let alone rest and relaxation."How about our Lord Jesus? How much time do you think Jesus get to sleep?
Great achievement often come from great passion. Great passion often doesn't leave much room for things like sleep, eat or exercise. So now my question is, is it more important to have great passion or balance lifestyle? Or do you think they can be obtain simultaneously?
Why am I asking this question? Because I find it a very important question to ask my self, as a homeschooling mom. When Den is interested in something, should I let her spend all her time in that particular subject/field or should I insist she has a more balance/well rounded education? Sometime when she is in reading mood or craft mood, she wants to spend the whole day/s reading or doing craft, should I let her be or should I insist on doing school as plan? Am I killing/suffocating her interest/passion by insisting she know a bit about everything instead zooming in into one area? Am I going too broad instead of deep?
These are just thought in progress...writing blog is a good way for me to organize my thought. So I have no ready answer. You are welcome to vote on that thought! Hahah! Im in voting mood!
Any way, as I said, those are just thought in progress, so please take them with a grain of salt. Remember also, this is from someone who has a rather dysfunctional sleep pattern and prefer to stay up til dawn and sleep til noon. One side note, Einstein claimed to sleep 10 hours per day and 11 hours if he need to work harder in solving the problem....because he said dream help him in problem solving. There! I presented two side of the coins! ^^
Back to what we did today.
Den woke up at 10am. After hug hug in bed and breakfast, we did the sunflower seed math (read about this at my previous blog here) at the kitchen table...Den think it is a game, so happily (insistingly) played with me. After that we left the house for lunch in a mall and followed by Den's 2 hour art class.
She just started the art class about a month ago. She asked me to send her to art class since she was about 4 or 5 years old. But I kept delaying it because I'm a bit worry art class might kill her creativity - you know, being told how to draw, how to paint instead of just draw the way you want it that kind of thing.
However when I think back about my own experience, I loved drawing when I was a kid but I stop when I was a teen because I did not have the technique to draw the way I wanted it to come out. So I can understand her frustration when she does not know how to draw what she want to draw. When I found a school that is willing to let us pay on class by class basis, I decided to sign her in. She enjoys it so far and very proud of what she can do.
After the class, she played in IKEA smallland for less then an hour before we had to leave (to beat the rush hours traffic). I sent her to my parents house, so that she can play with dogs and her grandparents. While she was there, she used iPad to do two pre-assigned homeworks -
1. Note Goal Pro - a music note reading program Den uses to practice note reading. Yamaha students are infamous for their poor note reading skill, so I'm trying to compensate for that. ^^
2. MathBoard - I use this for math drilling. I pre program the apps and it will automatically generates 20 math questions (that suit her level) for Den to works on. When she is done, she can save the result so that I can check on them later. On cool tool is the black board at the side which you can use to do all the draft calculation that you need. This is really cool on a travelling day, no need to prepare extra draft paper.
Yes! I love iPad and I think it is really great for homeschooler! Im contemplating writing a whole posting about all the great apps we use.
We had dinner at a restaurant together. While the adults were talking away, I read a book that I just bought for Den today. Recently Den has shown great interest in comic. It started with Winx Club (Im still not sure if it is actually suitable for Den's age!), and later she discovered Calvin and Hobbes. So when I saw a series of comic featuring biography of famous people (in Chinese!童悦坊漫画名人堂) in Popular, I knew I need to get them for Den. I bought two of them - Thomas Edison and Helen Keller. I read them while waiting for Den in Art class and I love them! They are very well written. The story lines and the drawing are captivating. The language is simple .
I decided to read Thomas Edison to her first since we just talked about Thomas Edison this week. At first she was a bit reluctant because it is in Chinese but when she saw that it is in comic form, she eagerly agreed to try it out. She loved it and was very upset when we had to stop (the adults were ready to leave the restaurant!). I'm going back to buy the other two in the series - Lincoln and Newton. I think they are good buy at RM16.90 each (before member discount).
I know, I know, I haven't being blogging for sometime now...more than one person has reminded me that....I started one last night and gotten too sleepy and decided to go to sleep instead...you see, to blog, I have to sacrifice my sleeping time...most of the time....but then lesson preparation/researching, reading for pleasure, The Mentalist (on my defense, that is the only TV I watch!...ok...may be also Bones!) etc etc also eating my sleep-time away....I always wonder how does other homeschooling mom does all these and yet get to have enough sleep?
Another reason for not blogging? There were so much happened for the past four months, I don't know how to blog about them all...so I've been procrastinating....I have finally came to the decision to just simply ignore the past few months and start from TODAY! ^^
Yesterday was a bad day....I planed a packed school day (we don't study every day, so our school day usually are long - 2-5 hours), Den ended up taking one and half hour finished her lunch...that make me crazy and did all the huffing and puffing....and then later we were stuck at math. Took us 1.5 hours....and I realized Den is still confused about place value (I'm very glad I found out about that though!).
Today was a good day. Everything went super smooth and had extra time for extra activities.
I woke Den up at 10am...this is something new that I just started about 2 months ago...I actually wake her up for study instead of just let her sleep in...^^
After breakfast, I taught her how to separate the whites and colors and put them into washer. I also showed her how to run the washer and later she helped folding and putting the washed clothes back to closet. The only thing I didn't allow her to do was to put the detergents into the washer....after watching the thought provoking video from TED - 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do....I am thinking now, may be I should let her put the detergents too...
I taught her how to fold clothes when she was about 3 or 4 years old. Now she can fold them better than me. While we were folding clothes, she told me when she grew up she wanted to be a laundry maid! Hahahaha!
We started our study with Bible reading. We have been on the book of Proverbs for the past month or so...detoured for awhile with My Passport To India Part II, now we are back to Proverbs. We use a very interesting iPad app called "Proverbs Project" to study Proverbs. Cartoonist Vern Herschberger illustrated every verse in Proverbs and it is such a treat to read them. Today we covered more than a chapter and Den was still bagging for more. These are some examples:
After Bible reading and prayer, we continued our Sonlight Science week 22. We had been on Week 22 for the past 2 weeks because of some of the very interesting internet links - we finally finished one of them yesterday about 4 famous scientists- Marie Carie, Jagadis Bose, Thomas Edison and Galilea(Yes! I can remember their name without checking! ^^).
Another links we have been using featured 66 current scientists, all of them in different fields of study/research! The link has short video for each of them to introduce their work and how they started and why they love science...Den and I LOVE it! We learned so many interesting things - Do you know cockroach can hold it breath for up to 45min?? LST!! That is why you should not try to drown the cockroaches! and Entomologist is the scientist that study cockroaches and other bugs! Most importantly, all these video make us feel like science is the best thing and we all want to be a scientist!
After that, Den did a puzzle using Brain Olympiad Book 1. Today puzzle was a bit more difficult, she got it all correct but took her quite some time to complete.
This is the puzzle she worked on today:
While she was working on the puzzle, I prepared a math game to play with her. Since I noticed she still having problem with the concept of place value, I looked into Peggy Kaye's Games For Learning and found a few good games to play with her. (Wow! I finally figure out how to put the Amazon Widget in my website! Yes! Now you can just go to the link and see some of the pages inside the books and read comments!)
Today we play with one of the game. I prepared some Sun flower seeds, a few plastic cups, paper and pencil. We decided on a number (Den chose 30), then I took a turn first to scoop up (with a plastic cup) what I estimated (no actual counting is allowed) to be 30 Sunflower seeds. I counted them and put 10 in each plastic cups. I filled 3 cups and had 8 seeds left, so I had 8 more than the expected. I wrote 8 on the paper. Then it was Den's turn. She did the same thing and filled 3 cups with only 4 seeds left. The closest to the actual number win and so she won the first round. We did that again and this time we were equal.
We are going to play this again and also some other games from the book until she get the idea of place value. I always love the idea of playing and learning at the same time and hopefully these games will help her learn the place value...or else I would have to find some other methods.
After that she practiced her ballet steps before we had lunch.
Den practiced her piano after lunch. We make a cake for tea after that.
We started CLP language art workbook 105-8 and Quiz 2 at around 3pm. Den make a few mistakes (some careless) in one section of her Quiz and that cost her 12 points and she lost the chance to get a reward from the reward box. This was the first time since we started the reward box system, she did not get a reward and thus the 'water gate' was burst opened. The workbook is getting harder, I was wondering if I should lower the benchmark....but I think I will wait and observe it more first. (To know more about the reward box, please read my previous blog here).
We had tea after that and she watched Goodtv Chinese Cartoons (Im counting that as part of the study - learning Chinese!). Since it had been a very hot day, she went swimming for an hour after that. Some of her friends came down and swim too and they had a very great time together.
At night, we finished making a small strip of clothes using her loom (she has been very fascinated with loom since we study it in history) and we also decorated it with gem stones.
I have been thinking how do I actually count the homeschooling hours? Should I include all the piano/ballet practices, house works, cake making, craft, swimming (PE!) in it too? It doesn't seems fair to only count the sit down work, right? Besides, what kind of example are we setting for Den if we tell her only the sit down work are consider learning?
Should I add in the many hours of reading that she did everyday as part of the schooling hours as well? Hmmmm...something to think about. So take a vote!
